By Title: X-Men Gold #25
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writers: Marc Guggenheim
Artists: Paulo Siqueira, Jose Luis
Story Rating: 8
Art Rating: 10
Color Rating: 10
Overall Rating: 9.3
The God of the Negative Zone has reached Earth for Scythian makes his presence known to the Marvel Universe. Only the X-Men and the aid of powerful allies can stand up against this global threat for Scythian’s power may be unmatched by any mortal.
Marc Guggenheim utilizes a large library of heroes branching the Marvel Universe closer together. The X-Men led by IceMan recruit Captain Britain and Meegan to help stop the Dartayus God in Paris, France.
The mutants inside the New York super prison are freed to battle the alien deity halfway across the world. Magik transports the team of Kitty Pryde, Storm, Colossus, and Night Crawler to the battlegrounds for the return conflict of a legendary threat.
Storm develops a new state of power through the Asgardian hammer Stormcaster, which is used to match the might of Scythian. Through tactical planning the combined forces of all X-Men from both groups manage to defeat Scythian before his power claims the planet.
Once again Guggenheim goes against his own build up in bringing forth Scythian. The mighty god is defeated rather quickly with no loss of life from the superheroes or outside the city blocks of Paris. Scythian’s defeat in a single issue only reduces the belief of this powerful enemy to a villain of the week scenario.
The comic book offers intense actions and outstanding powers in the climactic scenes battling the God. The comic does lack in scale in terms of prolonged stakes, missing story plots, and unexplained developments.
Paulo Siqueria and Jose Luis make a world that is striking visually through line work and colors that project the comic book genre further to top tier performance.
The pencil work presented is clean and complete with unique characteristics of light realism. Characters share incredible costumes with respected powers in conflict. Detail is present upon each individual hero and villain within the panels.
The cross hatching technique with transitions from thin to thick lines shows focus without overstepping the visuals. Solid black ink carries more depth to emphasize the power, scale, and physical nature of the people being portrayed at any given time.
The environment is solid with complete detail enhancing the world around the characters. Areas beyond the characters create understanding at to what is taking place in reflection of the immediate action.
Radiant colors and light sources match and complement the structures behind the pencil. A dominant light source can be viewed upon each page developing clear fades and hues of colors inside the spectrum. The main colors within the comic are red, blue, and black working coherently to make a vivid picture.
The conclusion leads to many questions as the story moves forward. Enemies of the X-Men return with new strategies to defeat the heroic mutants. Lydia Nance, a diplomat who opposes the existence of mutants works alongside a super sentinel robot. This powerful union may bring the end of our heroes. Find out more in further issues, as the lives of the X-Men are in constant fear of the new threats rising everyday to potentially end the carriers of the X-Gene.
